"The limited availability of laboratories and trained medical staff to conduct blood tests of immune system CD-4 T-cell levels that indicate when to start ART is one of the major problems that has slowed progress toward universal access to life-saving antiretroviral therapy (ART) to treat AIDS in developing nations.

Now, biostatistician Andrea Foulkes at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with colleagues at Philadelphia's Wistar Institute and elsewhere, propose a tool for prioritizing laboratory-based CD-4 cell count testing by linking cell counts to other patient data. They report details of their new "prediction-based classification" (PBC) system in the current issue of PLoS Medicine. Researchers in the United States, Argentina, South Africa, Canada, the U.K. and Malaysia took part in the study at seven sites around the world."